the nba is a grown man's league. it's not a place for this kind of behavior. i don't care one iota if dan fegan "pushed" for deandre jordan to end up in dallas. jordan needs to be able to take responsibility for his own future. the team an nba free agent decides to play for is perhaps the biggest decision they can make in a professional basketball setting. it affects their income in specific ways. it affects their family in specific ways. it affects their on-court performance in specific ways. it affects their future contracts in specific ways. this is simply not a situation where you can cry foul that "my agent made me do it!"
to make such a huge decision without recognizing its impact on both your immediate future and your long-term future is flat-out irresponsible. the nba has functioned with a "handshake agreement" mindset during free agency's moratorium for many years precisely because, no matter the quality of the player or the merits of their decision, free agents almost always take enough care to determine that they've made the decision they want to make. they deliberate with their agents, with their families, with their friends, with their posses and hanger-on's, and with themselves. lebron's "The Decision" moment was undoubtedly a lowlight of his career, but he was clearly a grown-ass man who was faced with a grown-ass decision. he was conflicted about leaving his hometown fans for miami, but he owned that decision fully, just as he did once again when he returned to cleveland last offseason. deandre jordan's "Indecision" moment has exposed a rather large flaw in the system; there's no accounting for the unpredictability of immaturity. but the nba will surely attempt to account for it in the future so that this incident doesn't repeat itself...
all of that said, i still think the clippers behaved in a deeply unprofessional manner. i can understand their sense of urgency under these circumstances, but it reflects so poorly on them as an organization to fly out to deandre jordan's home after a verbal agreement was already reached with another team, bunker themselves there until jordan agreed to re-sign, and then flat-out circumvent jordan's agent in negotiating a new contract. say what you want about the distinguished layer of sleaze that covers every power agent in the league, they exist to broker deals between players and teams, and dan fegan--slimy though he may be--brokered a deal between deandre jordan and the dallas mavericks. it's not fegan's fault that jordan couldn't make a decision for himself, or couldn't just tell his agent, "i disagree. this is what i want. make it happen." the agent works for the player, after all. and then, to top it off, the clippers contingent decided to play cards together after their deal was struck! like this was business as usual! bad form all around...
